Researchers Sarita Roy, Tanmay Sarkar, and Runu Chakraborty of Jadavpur University and Malda Polytechnic set out to fortify Kachagolla with jamun seed powder and to replace refined cane sugar with coconut sugar, a lower-glycemic sweetener derived from coconut palm sap. Their study, published in Discover Biotechnology, is the first to characterize the phytochemical composition of this traditional dessert and a jamun-fortified version of it. The results are striking: the fortified sweet stayed microbiologically and sensorially acceptable for five to six days longer than the conventional product, all while delivering significantly higher antioxidant activity and a richer polyphenol profile.

The choice of jamun seeds was no accident. Jamun (Syzygium cumini) seeds are typically thrown away after the fruit is eaten, yet they are packed with polyphenols, flavonoids, and other bioactive compounds long recognized in South Asian medicine for their antidiabetic, antimicrobial, and antioxidant properties. Previous work has shown that seeds such as chia and flaxseed can extend the shelf life of yoghurt, buttermilk, and butter by slowing lipid oxidation, the chemical breakdown of fats that produces rancid off-flavors. Jamun seeds, however, had never been systematically tested in a dairy sweetmeat.

To prepare the powder, the researchers microwave-dried fresh jamun seeds at power levels ranging from 300 to 900 watts until their moisture content fell from 11.5 percent to 3 percent, then ground and sieved them. Because color is a decisive factor in consumer appeal for Indian sweets, the team used response surface methodology with a Box-Behnken design to optimize three variables simultaneously: the microwave power used for drying, the percentage of jamun seed powder added, and the percentage of coconut sugar. The goal was to maximize total color difference, a measure of how visibly the fortified sweet departs from the pale hue of the original. The statistical model, which achieved an R-squared value of 0.9995, identified an optimum of 600 watts, 2 percent jamun seed powder, and 30 percent coconut sugar.

The color chemistry behind the optimization is elegant. Coconut sugar contains reducing sugars and free amino acids that drive the Maillard reaction, a non-enzymatic browning process between sugars and amino groups, while microwave drying releases brown polysaccharides from the jamun seed tissue. Together these reactions gave the fortified sweet a deep yellowish-brown tone that panelists actually preferred. The browning index of the fortified product reached nearly 55, compared with roughly 14 for the conventional version, and its chroma, or color saturation, rose from 13.09 to 24.28.

Beyond appearance, the nutritional upgrade was substantial. Total polyphenol content in the fortified sweet was 4.4 times higher than in the conventional product, and ABTS radical scavenging activity rose from about 29 percent to over 40 percent. High-performance liquid chromatography revealed significant increases in seven individual polyphenols, including a 68.5 percent rise in gallic acid, a 41 percent rise in kaempferol, a 51 percent rise in protocatechuic acid, and a tenfold increase in ferulic acid. The fortified sweet also contained 24.5 percent more protein, more fiber, and 14.85 percent more total minerals, with notable gains in potassium, sodium, and copper.

Texture analysis told a subtler story. The fortified sweet was slightly harder, a consequence of its lower fat content and more compact microstructure, which scanning electron microscopy confirmed as smaller, more uniformly packed crystals and a smoother surface. Cohesiveness, springiness, gumminess, and chewiness were all significantly higher, while a panel of 45 trained assessors rated the fortified product’s color, chewiness, juiciness, flavor, and visual appearance above the conventional sweet. One trade-off emerged: in-vitro protein digestibility was 7 percent lower in the fortified version, likely because phenolic compounds bind milk proteins and monoterpene aldehydes in the seed powder inhibit digestive proteases.

The most dramatic findings concerned spoilage. Over seven days of room-temperature storage, the fortified sweet showed significantly lower lipid oxidation, measured through free fatty acid content, peroxide value, and ultraviolet absorptivity. Microbial counts told the same story: the conventional sweet exceeded FSSAI permissible bacterial limits by day 4 and yeast and mold limits by day 5, whereas the fortified version stayed within regulatory bounds until day 7. The team attributes this to the combined antimicrobial and antioxidant effects of the jamun seed polyphenols and coconut sugar, both of which have demonstrated ability to suppress bacterial and fungal growth in earlier studies.

The implications reach well beyond a single sweet. The study offers a replicable template for marrying traditional food systems with modern nutraceutical science, turning an agricultural waste stream into a clean-label preservative that simultaneously boosts nutrition. For the millions of people who cannot afford refrigeration, a sweet that keeps for nearly a week at room temperature is not a luxury but a meaningful improvement in food security. The researchers suggest that future work should explore scalability, economic feasibility, and other phytochemical-rich seed powders, pointing toward a future where the seeds we currently discard become the preservatives of tomorrow’s pantry.

Subject of Research: Fortification of a traditional Indian dairy sweet with jamun seed powder and coconut sugar to improve shelf life, nutrition, and sensory quality

Article Title: Enhancing shelf-life and sensory quality of Kachagolla (sweet cottage cheese truffles) through jamun seed and coconut sugar substitution

Article References: Roy, S., Sarkar, T., & Chakraborty, R. (2025). Enhancing shelf-life and sensory quality of Kachagolla (sweet cottage cheese truffles) through jamun seed and coconut sugar substitution. Discover Biotechnology, 2(1), Article 15. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44340-025-00026-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44340-025-00026-x

Keywords: Kachagolla, jamun seed powder, coconut sugar, shelf life, antioxidants, polyphenols, dairy sweetmeat, lipid oxidation, response surface methodology, Maillard reaction, food preservation, functional foods

The team’s strategy rests on the Maillard reaction, the same non-enzymatic chemistry that browns bread crust and sears steak. In food science, this reaction can be harnessed deliberately: a reducing sugar is covalently grafted onto the free amino groups of a protein, producing a protein-polysaccharide conjugate with improved solubility, antioxidant activity and interfacial behavior. The researchers chose galacto-oligosaccharides, or GOS, as their grafting partner, a prebiotic carbohydrate derived from lactose that is already valued for feeding beneficial gut bacteria. When carefully controlled, wet-heating glycosylation at 90 degrees Celsius for just 15 minutes can attach GOS to protein while avoiding the pitfalls of overdone Maillard chemistry, such as excessive browning, protein crosslinking and the formation of advanced glycation end-products.

The central insight of the study is that the history of the protein before conjugation matters as much as the conjugation step itself. The team compared two extraction routes. The conventional route used alkaline solubilization at pH 9 with stirring, precipitation at the isoelectric point and freeze-drying, yielding around 39.7 milligrams of protein per gram of flour at best. The microwave-assisted route, optimized through a nine-run screening design in a Labotron 12T system, hit its peak at 400 watts for 20 minutes at pH 9, delivering 293.72 milligrams per gram, roughly seven times the conventional yield. The rapid volumetric heating disrupts the cellular matrix and releases protein efficiently, but crucially it also appears to leave the protein in a partially unfolded state with more reactive amino groups exposed.

That conformational legacy showed up clearly in the structural data. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy revealed that the microwave-extracted conjugate, dubbed LPIGHM, showed the strongest evidence of carbohydrate incorporation, with a pronounced growth of the carbon-oxygen stretching envelope between 1200 and 1000 per centimeter and a weakening of the ordered amide bands. Differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis painted the same picture: the microwave-derived conjugate displayed the most complex thermal profile and enhanced structural integrity compared with the non-heated mixture and the conventionally prepared conjugate. Secondary-structure analysis showed beta-sheet content falling from 56.7 percent in native lupin protein to 50.0 percent in LPIGHM, with beta-turns and random coil rising in compensation, a shift from rigid order toward flexible disorder that favors interfacial performance.

Perhaps the most dramatic structural change was in particle size. Native lupin protein isolate was heavily aggregated, with a mean hydrodynamic diameter of 1775 nanometers, a figure the authors caution is skewed by a minority population of large clumps. After glycation, the conjugates shrank dramatically: 152 nanometers for the simple mixture, 99 for the conventionally prepared conjugate and 89.7 nanometers for the microwave-derived one, an apparent 19.8-fold reduction. Surface hydrophobicity collapsed in parallel, from 443 arbitrary units for the native protein to just 62.5 for LPIGHM, as hydroxyl-rich GOS chains replaced exposed apolar side chains on the particle surface. Fluorescence spectroscopy confirmed tertiary structural rearrangement, with tryptophan emission quenching and blue-shifting most strongly in the microwave-derived conjugate.

These structural shifts translated directly into functional gains. Foaming capacity of the native protein was a dismal 10 percent with 4 percent stability; the microwave-derived conjugate reached 64 percent capacity and 36 percent stability, increases of 6.4-fold and 9-fold respectively. Emulsifying activity index climbed from 7.2 to 74.2 square meters per gram, a tenfold improvement, while emulsion stability rose from 40.2 to 71.6 minutes. Water-holding capacity more than doubled to 2.9 grams per gram, and oil-holding capacity rose to 14.6 grams per gram. Solubility at neutral pH improved only modestly, from 31.5 to 33 percent, which the authors attribute to measuring well away from the isoelectric region where glycation exerts its largest effect on plant proteins.

Correlation analysis across the four treatment means reinforced the mechanistic story. The apparent degree of grafting, measured by the loss of free amino groups, was the strongest single predictor of performance, correlating at r = 0.99 with foaming capacity and r = 0.98 with emulsifying activity. Surface hydrophobicity correlated negatively with solubility and interfacial function, and particle size and beta-sheet content tracked negatively with emulsion stability. Notably, zeta potential showed no strong association with any interfacial property, supporting the authors’ argument that stabilization in these conjugates is steric and hydration-driven rather than electrostatic: the attached carbohydrate layer displaces the shear plane outward and screens the underlying charges, so a less negative zeta potential can coexist with more bound sugar and better stability.

The biological results were more nuanced and enzyme-specific. Alpha-glucosidase inhibition improved roughly fourfold in all GOS-containing systems, reaching 60 to 66 percent at 100 milligrams per milliliter, an effect present even in the non-heated mixture, suggesting the oligosaccharide itself contributes to binding at the enzyme’s pocket-shaped active site. Alpha-amylase inhibition, by contrast, was not improved and declined at low concentrations, plausibly because the hydrated sugar chains obstruct the enzyme’s extended substrate-binding cleft. ACE inhibition remained modest throughout. Antioxidant activity rose in an assay-dependent fashion: the microwave-derived conjugate excelled at ABTS radical scavenging, reaching 43.9 percent at the lowest tested concentration versus 12.8 percent for native protein, while the conventionally prepared conjugate showed the strongest reducing power and total antioxidant capacity. Against Caco-2 colorectal cancer cells, antiproliferative activity was substantial, though the native protein was the most active at 86.2 percent, and the microwave-derived conjugate partially preserved activity after heating.

The gut microbiota experiments provided the study’s most forward-looking results. Using pooled fecal slurries from six healthy adult donors in an in vitro fermentation model, the team found that the conjugates, particularly the microwave-derived one, produced the most gas, retained more acetate at 24 hours than the free GOS mixture, and fostered the most even microbial community, with a Shannon index of 3.23 versus 1.85 for the untreated control. Beneficial genera such as Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus were enriched while opportunistic taxa including Escherichia and Klebsiella declined. PICRUSt2 functional prediction pointed to enhanced carbohydrate and energy metabolism pathways. The authors are careful to note that short-chain fatty acid concentrations declined over the incubation rather than accumulating, that the fermentation was run without simulated digestion, and that the predicted pathways reflect metabolic potential rather than measured activity.

The study’s limitations are candidly acknowledged. The design did not include a microwave-extracted protein carried through without conjugation, so the effects attributed to LPIGHM belong to the combined process rather than to microwave extraction alone. The degree of grafting is an apparent value that cannot distinguish sugar attachment from conformational masking of amino groups, and the correlation analysis rests on only four treatment means. Confirming the full picture will require mass-spectrometric mapping of glycation sites, quantification of advanced glycation end-products and available lysine, digestion studies before fermentation, and trials in real food matrices. Even so, the core message stands: how a plant protein is extracted shapes how well it can be engineered afterward. For food formulators wrestling with the functional shortcomings of legume proteins, the microwave is looking less like a shortcut and more like a strategic first move.

Subject of Research: Microwave-assisted extraction of lupin protein isolate to enhance Maillard glycation with galacto-oligosaccharides for improved functionality and gut fermentability

Article Title: Microwave-assisted extraction enhances wet-heating Maillard glycation of lupin protein with galacto-oligosaccharides: structural basis for improved interfacial functionality and gut fermentability

Article References: Ullah, N., Bamigbade, G., Arachchi, M. J. P., Ali, A., Kamal-Eldin, A., Zhou, F., Miao, S., & Ayyash, M. (2026). Microwave-assisted extraction enhances wet-heating Maillard glycation of lupin protein with galacto-oligosaccharides: structural basis for improved interfacial functionality and gut fermentability. Food Chemistry: X, 39, Article 104518. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fochx.2026.104518

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.fochx.2026.104518

Keywords: lupin protein isolate, Maillard reaction, galacto-oligosaccharides, microwave-assisted extraction, protein glycation, emulsifying properties, foaming capacity, gut microbiota, short-chain fatty acids, prebiotics, plant protein, Food Chemistry: X

The raw material at the center of the study is porcine liver, a protein-rich co-product of pork processing that contains roughly 22 percent protein and accounts for about 1.35 percent of a pig’s live body weight. Because animal by-products are already mainstays of the pet food industry, prized as sustainable and economical protein sources, liver represents an attractive substrate for producing bioactive peptides. The researchers freeze-dried fresh livers collected from three-way crossbred pigs at a commercial slaughterhouse, ground them into a powder containing approximately 81 grams of crude protein per 100 grams, and then subjected the powder to enzymatic hydrolysis using Alcalase 2.4 L, a bacterial protease, at 50 degrees Celsius for two hours with the enzyme dosed at one percent by weight relative to protein.

From that hydrolysate the team generated three distinct treatments, each representing a step along a processing gradient. The untreated control, designated PLH, was simply the alcalase hydrolysate. A second sample, PLH-H, was heated at 120 degrees Celsius for 90 minutes in an oil bath without any added sugar, isolating the effects of heat alone. The third, PLH-HX, received the same thermal treatment but in the presence of 2.5 percent D(+)-xylose, a five-carbon reducing sugar noted in the literature for its relatively high reactivity in Maillard chemistry. Xylose’s aldehyde group attacks the free epsilon-amino groups of lysine residues on the peptides, forming Schiff bases that rearrange into Amadori products and eventually cascade into a complex family of Maillard reaction products, including brown, polymeric melanoidins.

Three structural assays confirmed that the intended chemistry had, in fact, occurred, and also revealed what had not. Sulfhydryl content, measured with Ellman’s reagent, fell by 20 to 25 percent in both heated samples relative to the unheated control, which started at 18.14 micromoles per gram of protein, but the xylose-treated sample was statistically indistinguishable from the heat-only sample. That pattern indicates the thiol loss stemmed from thermal oxidation and thiol-disulfide exchange rather than from glycation itself; xylose apparently targeted lysine side chains, not cysteine residues. Meanwhile, the browning index, read as absorbance at 420 nanometers, rose sharply only in the xylose-treated material, signaling the formation of chromophoric melanoidin-type compounds, and the o-phthaldialdehyde assay showed that free amino groups dropped most steeply in that same sample, the inverse of the browning trend and a classic fingerprint of advanced Maillard progression.

Electrophoresis added a molecular-resolution view of the transformation. Conventional SDS-PAGE of the untreated hydrolysate showed distinct bands near 70 kilodaltons, likely residual albumin-like serum proteins resistant to the enzymatic conditions, alongside a population of low-molecular-weight fragments between 10 and 20 kilodaltons. After heating, higher-molecular-weight bands intensified, consistent with heat-induced aggregation. The xylose-treated sample displayed the strongest bands in the 70 to 100 kilodalton region, plausibly reflecting sugar attachment or peptide cross-linking that altered charge and mobility. Tricine SDS-PAGE, which resolves small peptides, told a complementary story: the 10 to 15 kilodalton bands that were prominent in the control faded markedly after glycation, reinforcing the conclusion that xylose had covalently decorated the low-molecular-weight peptide fraction.

Those structural gains came at a digestive cost. When the samples were pushed through a simulated canine gastrointestinal model, two hours of pepsin digestion at pH 2.0 and 39 degrees Celsius, the normal body temperature of dogs, followed by four hours with pancreatin at pH 7.5, apparent digestibility, calculated from the mass of undigested residue, ranked the treatments in the exact order of their structural modification. The untreated hydrolysate achieved 49 percent digestibility, the heat-treated sample slipped to 46 percent, and the xylose-glycated sample fell to just 40 percent. The authors attribute the decline to the modification of epsilon-amino groups and potential cross-linking between peptide chains, which can interfere with protease recognition and reduce substrate flexibility. In other words, the sugar tags that create antioxidant activity also act as steric shields against the very enzymes meant to break the protein down.

The antioxidant results before digestion were, on the surface, a triumph for the Maillard approach. In the DPPH radical-scavenging assay, the glycated hydrolysate posted a remarkable 94.81 percent scavenging activity, well above the untreated control at 88.61 percent and the heat-treated sample at 64.89 percent. Hydroxyl radical scavenging followed the same hierarchy, with the glycated sample reaching 10.11 percent compared with 2.49 percent for the control, an outcome the authors link to enhanced metal-chelating capacity and redox-active intermediates generated during the reaction. Reducing power, a measure of electron-donating capability, also peaked in the glycated sample, consistent with the formation of melanoidin-like structures that donate electrons through stable redox cycling. Curiously, the ABTS assay broke the pattern: before digestion the glycated sample actually recorded the lowest ABTS activity of the three, suggesting that Maillard-derived structures do not uniformly enhance every electron-transfer chemistry.

Digestion then rewrote the scoreboard, and in an assay-dependent way. DPPH activity declined in all samples after simulated digestion, but the drop was dramatic for the glycated material, which lost 36.95 percent of its activity, compared with a modest 4.88 percent loss for the heat-treated sample. The Maillard-derived radical-scavenging structures, it appears, are themselves vulnerable to enzymatic degradation. Hydroxyl radical scavenging showed a similar vulnerability: the glycated sample fell from 10.11 to 5.92 percent after digestion, while the untreated hydrolysate actually rose from 2.49 to 6.13 percent, likely because gastrointestinal proteolysis released fresh low-molecular-weight peptides with metal-chelating or radical-quenching properties. Yet the ABTS assay flipped in the opposite direction, with all treatments increasing after digestion and the glycated sample posting the highest post-digestion value at 4.51 percent, up from 2.81 percent. This suggests the glycated proteins may function as latent antioxidant reservoirs that release hydrophilic, electron-donating peptides upon proteolytic attack, a form of activity the ABTS assay is particularly sensitive to detecting.

Reducing power, meanwhile, proved remarkably indifferent to digestion: simulated gastrointestinal processing did not substantially alter it, while treatment effects persisted, with the glycated sample retaining the highest value at 0.017 versus 0.014 for the control. The authors interpret this as evidence that Maillard-derived redox-active structures possess greater digestive resilience than the radical-scavenging structures detected by DPPH or hydroxyl radical assays. Taken together, the four assays paint a picture in which the antioxidant benefit of glycation is real but selectively preserved: electron-transfer capacity survives the digestive gauntlet, while bulky radical-scavenging structures are partially dismantled. For formulators, the practical lesson is that no single chemical assay can predict how a functional ingredient will behave inside an animal; the choice of assay fundamentally changes the conclusion.

The study’s framing within the booming pet wellness economy gives its findings added weight. As the population of aging dogs grows, the industry has chased ingredients that combat oxidative stress, chronic inflammation, and immune dysfunction, and protein-derived antioxidant peptides have been leading candidates. This work demonstrates, with careful replication across three independent production batches and two-way statistical analysis of treatment and digestion-stage effects, that a combined hydrolysis and Maillard strategy can modulate the structural and redox characteristics of porcine liver without elaborate processing. But it also demonstrates that the enhancement is fragile and conditional, and that glycation measurably reduces digestibility, a critical parameter for any feed ingredient. The authors are explicit that their in vitro model serves only as a preliminary screening tool; previous studies suggest in vitro and in vivo antioxidant behavior of Maillard products tends to align broadly, but the metabolic handling of advanced Maillard reaction structures in companion animals remains under discussion. In vivo validation, along with peptide-level characterization of the digesta, will be needed before sugar-grafted liver hydrolysates earn a place in a senior dog’s bowl. Until then, the study stands as an elegant caution: in functional nutrition, what a molecule does in a test tube is only the first chapter of its story.

Subject of Research: Xylose-mediated Maillard reaction effects on antioxidant capacity and digestibility of enzymatically hydrolyzed porcine liver during simulated canine gastrointestinal digestion

Article Title: Impact of xylose-mediated Maillard reaction on antioxidant capacity and digestibility of alcalase-hydrolyzed porcine liver during simulated canine digestion

Article References: Impact of xylose-mediated Maillard reaction on antioxidant capacity and digestibility of alcalase-hydrolyzed porcine liver during simulated canine digestion. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44463-026-00090-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44463-026-00090-9

Keywords: Maillard reaction, xylose, porcine liver hydrolysate, alcalase, antioxidant activity, in vitro digestion, canine digestion, pet food, digestibility, bioactive peptides, melanoidins, animal by-products

The research, conducted by Boin Lee, Seunghyun Lee, and Young Min Choi at Sunmoon University in Korea, set out to answer a question that has been largely ignored in the sous-vide literature: what happens when meat with an inherently compromised structure is cooked gently at precisely controlled low temperatures? Most previous work on sous-vide has focused on normal-quality pork, leaving a gap in knowledge about whether the technique can compensate for the defects of PSE meat or whether those defects are simply beyond repair.

To find out, the team purchased 42 porcine longissimus dorsi muscles, the cut known commercially as pork loin, from a local market and sorted them into two quality classes based on lightness and drip loss. Thirty-four loins met the criteria for reddish-pink, firm, and non-exudative meat, the industry’s benchmark for normal quality, while eight were classified as PSE, with lightness values above 50 and drip loss exceeding 6 percent. The PSE loins indeed proved paler and far leakier than their normal counterparts, losing 7.25 percent of their weight as drip compared with 2.76 percent for the normal group, even though the ultimate muscle pH of the two classes was statistically indistinguishable.

Each loin was then divided into sections and assigned to one of three cooking treatments. The first was conventional pan-frying on a stainless-steel pan heated to 180 degrees Celsius, with cooking continued until the core of the meat reached 71 degrees. The second was sous-vide, in which vacuum-packed samples were immersed in a water bath held at exactly 60 degrees for three hours. The third, abbreviated SVS, combined the two: the same gentle water-bath cooking followed by a rapid 60-second sear on each side at 180 degrees. These parameters were chosen deliberately, drawing on earlier studies showing that pork loin slices around two centimeters thick reach optimal quality after sous-vide treatment at 60 degrees for three to four hours, and that searing sous-vide pork for roughly a minute produces the most acceptable appearance.

The physicochemical results were striking. Pan-fried PSE loins lost the most weight during cooking among the PSE groups at 23.8 percent and registered the highest Warner-Bratzler shear force values, the standard instrumental measure of toughness. In contrast, PSE loins cooked sous-vide, whether seared afterward or not, achieved shear values statistically identical to those of normal-quality pork cooked by any of the three methods. In other words, the gentle water bath erased the toughness penalty that PSE meat normally pays under high heat. The searing step did add extra treatment loss, pushing PSE-SVS samples to 29.5 percent weight loss, but the tenderness advantage held firm.

The explanation lies in the physics and biochemistry of low-temperature cooking. Because sous-vide sealing prevents evaporative losses and the water bath never exceeds 60 degrees, muscle proteins denature gradually and evenly. Endogenous enzymes such as calpains and caspases retain enough residual activity below 70 degrees to weakly degrade myofibrillar proteins, while heat-stable collagen slowly converts to gelatin. The result is less transverse fiber shrinkage, better water retention, and a structure that yields easily to the bite. For PSE meat, whose protein functionality is already impaired by postmortem denaturation, this forgiving thermal environment appears to prevent the compounding damage that a hot pan inflicts.

Sensory evaluation told an equally compelling story. Eleven trained panelists, assessed over dozens of sessions after at least six months of training, scored the cooked samples on a nine-point scale for tenderness attributes, juiciness, flavor, off-flavor, and overall acceptability. Sous-vide loins from both quality classes were rated softer, more tender, less chewy, and juicier than pan-fried samples, and the panelists could not reliably distinguish the tenderness of PSE and normal loins within the same sous-vide treatment. Remarkably, PSE loins cooked sous-vide alone were judged more tender and juicy than normal loins cooked conventionally, and PSE sous-vide samples earned higher overall eating acceptability scores than normal pan-fried pork.

Sous-vide does have an Achilles heel, and the panelists saw it clearly. The low cooking temperature limits Maillard reactions, the cascade of chemistry between amino acids and reducing sugars that produces browned surfaces and roasted aromas. Sous-vide-only samples looked pale, scored lowest on color and appearance acceptability, and carried the weakest flavor intensity in both quality classes. This is where the searing step proved decisive. A minute on the hot pan created the familiar browned crust, and with it, color acceptability scores jumped so that seared PSE loins were rated just as visually appealing as seared normal loins. Flavor intensity also rose significantly in the seared groups, driven by the volatile compounds generated at high surface temperatures.

The study is not a claim that PSE and normal pork are interchangeable. Panelists still detected differences in juiciness and flavor intensity within the seared group, and PSE meat lost more weight during cooking under every treatment, reflecting its fundamentally weaker water-holding capacity. Appearance scores for PSE loins also lagged behind normal loins within each cooking method, likely because the disrupted muscle structure of PSE meat impairs uniform protein network formation during heating. What the findings do establish is that sous-vide technology, especially when paired with a brief sear, can substantially narrow a quality gap that the meat industry has long treated as an unavoidable loss.

The implications reach well beyond the laboratory. With global pork consumption rising and carcass weights projected to climb, the incidence of PSE meat, linked to intensive genetic selection for fast-growing, glycolytic muscle fibers, is unlikely to disappear soon. Upgrading low-grade loins into products that consumers actually enjoy eating represents both an economic and a sustainability win, reducing waste in processing and foodservice settings. For chefs and home cooks, the study adds scientific weight to a technique already beloved in fine dining: cook gently, sear fast, and even imperfect meat can deliver a tender, juicy, beautifully browned result.

Subject of Research: Effects of sous-vide and searing cooking treatments on the quality of PSE and normal pork loins

Article Title: Effects of sous-vide and searing treatments on cooked meat and organoleptic quality attributes in pork loins derived from PSE and normal conditions

Article References: Lee, B., Lee, S., & Choi, Y. M. (2026). Effects of sous-vide and searing treatments on cooked meat and organoleptic quality attributes in pork loins derived from PSE and normal conditions. Food Science of Animal Resources, 46(1), Article 82. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44463-026-00076-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44463-026-00076-7

Keywords: PSE pork, sous-vide cooking, searing, pork loin, meat quality, sensory evaluation, Maillard reaction, tenderness, juiciness, water-holding capacity, food science, meat processing

The research team, led by Chao Sun and Mengting Zhu, worked with fresh Zijuan leaves harvested in June 2025 from a plantation in Menghai County, in China’s Yunnan Province, picking the standard one bud with three leaves. The leaves were processed into oolong tea using a carefully standardized protocol: solar and static withering, two rounds of shaking with cooling intervals, piling, fixation at 280 degrees Celsius, rolling, and a two-stage drying sequence. After a three-day rest, the finished tea was divided into four batches. One batch was left unroasted as a control, while the others were roasted for two hours at 80, 110, or 150 degrees Celsius, representing light, medium, and high roasting intensities. All compositional data were expressed on a dry-weight basis to correct for the moisture that roasting drives off, which fell from just over 4 percent in the control to about 1.1 percent in the most heavily roasted sample.

Sensory evaluation followed the Chinese national standard GB/T 23776-2018, with a panel of seven trained assessors, each with more than five years of experience, scoring the teas on a 100-point system weighted toward taste and aroma. The results told a nuanced story. The lightly roasted tea earned the highest overall score of 91.7, praised for an elegant, sweet aroma and a thick, mellow taste with only slight astringency. The unroasted control scored 89.4, with a distinctly spicy aroma but noticeable astringency. Medium roasting produced a score of 89.5 and a return of the spicy, varietal character, while the high-roasted tea scored 90.8, distinguished by a pronounced roasted aroma and the highest taste score of all, a thick and robust mouthfeel with classic oolong character.

Instrumental color analysis of the tea liquors mirrored these impressions. The control tea, rich in anthocyanins, produced a light brownish-red liquor with a visible purple hue. Light and medium roasting shifted the liquor toward a brighter brownish-yellow, a color generally considered more desirable for oolong tea. But heavy roasting reversed the trend: the liquor darkened significantly, its brightness measured by the L* parameter dropping to 16.69 compared with 20.31 in the control, and the purple tone reappeared. The researchers attribute this to two converging processes, the complexation of anthocyanins with other polyphenols under thermal stress and the accumulation of brown melanoidins generated by advanced Maillard reactions, which together darken the infusion and reduce its visual clarity.

Beneath the sensory shifts lay systematic changes in the tea’s non-volatile chemistry. Anthocyanins, the signature compounds of Zijuan, declined steadily with roasting intensity, falling from 2.62 milligrams per gram in the control to 2.11 milligrams per gram after high roasting, a loss of roughly 19.5 percent. Under intense heat, anthocyanins are prone to structural cleavage, including chalcone ring-opening, and can degrade into phenolic acids and aldehydes or participate in co-pigmentation and polymerization with oxidized polyphenols. This pigment breakdown helps explain the visual migration from a purple-tinged liquor to a brownish-red one, and may also contribute to the softening of astringency that panelists noticed in the roasted samples.

The catechins, the bitter and astringent polyphenols central to tea taste, displayed their own choreography. Epi-type catechins, which made up nearly 88 percent of the total, remained stable under light and medium roasting but dropped significantly under high roasting, with epigallocatechin falling by almost 11 percent and epicatechin by more than 12 percent. Meanwhile, the non-epi-type catechin gallocatechin surged by 51.63 percent, a hallmark of thermal epimerization in which epi-forms convert to their non-epi counterparts under heat. Gallic acid rose from 0.51 to 0.80 milligrams per gram, likely released by thermal hydrolysis of galloylated catechins such as EGCG and ECG. The net effect was a 6.33 percent decline in total catechins under high roasting, a shift that weakens the interactions between polyphenols and salivary proteins and helps explain why heavily roasted tea tastes smoother and more full-bodied despite its darker character.

Sugars and amino acids, the fuel for flavor-generating thermal reactions, followed a rise-and-fall pattern. Soluble sugars initially increased from 7.85 to 8.21 milligrams per gram under light roasting, possibly through partial hydrolysis of polysaccharides, then fell to 6.57 milligrams per gram under high roasting as they were consumed in Maillard-type pathways. L-theanine, the predominant amino acid in tea and a key contributor to umami and mellowness, declined relentlessly across the roasting gradient, from 1.19 milligrams per gram in the control to just 0.53 after high roasting. Caffeine, by contrast, stayed essentially flat across all treatments, which means the reduced bitterness of roasted tea owes more to catechin changes than to any loss of this alkaloid.

The volatile chemistry revealed the most spectacular changes of all. Using headspace solid-phase microextraction coupled with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, the team identified 64 volatile compounds across the treatments. The unroasted control contained only 29 volatiles, dominated by floral oxygenated terpenes such as hotrienol and linalool. Light roasting actually reduced total volatile content, yet improved perceived aroma, likely because diminishing green and sulfurous notes stopped masking the remaining floral and sweet compounds. Medium roasting exploded the volatile inventory to 55 compounds and more than doubled total abundance, introducing 22 new substances including terpenes, pyrroles, and the Strecker aldehydes 3-methylbutanal and 2-methylbutanal, direct chemical evidence of Maillard and Strecker reactions consuming sugars and amino acids. High roasting pushed further, generating roast-aroma pyrazines and furfuryl pyrroles while degrading many fresh, green volatiles, restructuring the profile toward nutty and roasted notes.

Multivariate statistics sharpened the picture. A partial least squares-discriminant analysis model, validated with a 200-permutation test to rule out overfitting, cleanly separated the samples by roasting intensity and identified ten key discriminant volatiles, led by the pyranoid and furanoid oxides of linalool, followed by linalool itself, alpha-farnesene, and 2-pentylfuran. Many of these compounds are associated with floral and fruity aromas, marking them as the chemical fulcrum on which the sensory character of Zijuan oolong turns. The researchers are careful to note that these statistical discriminants are not necessarily the aroma-active compounds themselves, but they provide a powerful fingerprint of how far the roasting process has progressed.

The practical implications reach beyond one purple cultivar. The study demonstrates that roasting is not a simple dial from raw to burnt but a staged chemical program: light roasting polishes and balances, medium roasting builds complexity and varietal intensity, and high roasting delivers the roasted depth that some oolong drinkers prize. Because consumer preferences vary, the authors emphasize that no single roasting level is universally optimal; instead, producers can select intensity according to the flavor profile and market position they want. For a cultivar as chemically distinctive as Zijuan, whose anthocyanin-rich matrix responds to heat in ways conventional green-leaf teas do not, that kind of compositional roadmap could help transform an ancient craft into a precision process, one carefully controlled degree at a time.

Subject of Research: Effects of roasting intensity on the sensory quality and chemical composition of anthocyanin-rich Zijuan oolong tea

Article Title: Effect of roasting intensity on sensory quality and chemical composition of Zijuan oolong tea

Article References: Sun, C., Song, T., Hu, J., Wang, M., Chen, C., Tian, Y., Yang, Y., Luo, Q., Li, Y., Shen, S., Liu, B., & Zhu, M. (2026). Effect of roasting intensity on sensory quality and chemical composition of Zijuan oolong tea. Food Chemistry: X, 39, Article 104462. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fochx.2026.104462

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.fochx.2026.104462

Keywords: Zijuan tea, oolong tea, roasting, anthocyanins, catechins, L-theanine, Maillard reaction, volatile compounds, flavor chemistry, tea sensory evaluation, purple tea, Food Chemistry

The research team, led by Xiaoqian Chen of Beijing Technology and Business University together with colleagues including Maurice O’Sullivan of University College Cork, immersed fresh duck eggs in a pickling solution containing 4.5 percent sodium hydroxide, 4.0 percent sodium chloride, and 0.4 percent copper sulfate at 25 degrees Celsius. Over 36 days, they sampled the eggs at seven time points, carefully separating white and yolk, and subjected each compartment to an arsenal of analytical techniques: gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC–MS), gas chromatography–ion mobility spectrometry (GC-IMS), an electronic nose with ten metal oxide sensors, liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry metabolomics, and a trained human sensory panel scoring six odor attributes.

The first thing the team documented was the dramatic chemical shift that sets everything else in motion. Egg white pH surged from 9.78 to 11.43 within just six days, driven by rapid alkali penetration through osmotic pressure, before easing slightly in later stages, possibly because copper ions block pores and limit further alkali diffusion. The yolk, shielded by the surrounding white, lagged behind: its pH climbed more slowly from 6.40 to 10.28 over 18 days and then leveled off as a dense protein gel network formed, restricting alkali movement. This pH gradient is the engine of the entire transformation, because strongly alkaline conditions unfold proteins, expose reactive side chains, and accelerate both hydrolysis and oxidation.

Protein degradation indeed followed the pH curve closely. Egg white protein content dropped sharply from 18.58 to 12.94 milligrams per milliliter in the early phase, while yolk proteins declined steadily throughout, indicating that yolk lipoproteins were being dismantled under the alkaline assault. Protein oxidation, measured as carbonyl content, rose continuously in both compartments, with egg white consistently more oxidized than yolk, peaking at 1.15 nanomoles per milligram of protein at day 24. Lipid oxidation told a different story: confined almost entirely to the yolk, whose unsaturated fatty acids make it the fat-rich heart of the egg, thiobarbituric acid reactive substances increased nearly thirteenfold, with the bulk of that rise, from 0.15 to 1.68 milligrams per kilogram, occurring within the first 24 days before the reaction plateaued.

Against this backdrop of molecular upheaval, the volatile aroma compounds emerged in distinct waves. In egg white, GC-IMS detected 56 volatile compounds and GC–MS found 61, spanning aldehydes, ketones, alcohols, esters, furans, and nitrogen-containing species. The early pickling phase was dominated by ketones and furans, but as the weeks passed, alcohols and nitrogen-containing compounds steadily accumulated and became the dominant contributors. Mid-stage samples acquired fruity and floral notes from esters such as ethyl acetate, while late-stage egg white was characterized by cumulative aldehydes, ketones, and pyrazines, the roasted, nutty heterocycles born of Maillard chemistry. Electronic nose data confirmed this staged evolution, with principal component analysis showing early samples clearly separated from one another while day-30 and day-36 samples converged, signaling that egg white aroma stabilizes near the end of pickling.

To pinpoint which of these compounds actually matter to the human nose, the researchers calculated odor activity values, the ratio of each compound’s concentration to its odor threshold. Only 16 volatiles in egg white crossed the OAV threshold of 1, and just three combined high OAVs with high statistical importance in the discriminant models: nonanal, which lends waxy, citrus-like notes; phenethyl alcohol, a rose-scented product of phenylalanine degradation that appears only after day 24; and above all 1-octen-3-ol, the mushroom-smelling alcohol derived from linoleic and arachidonic acid oxidation, whose OAV of 1302 made it the single greatest contributor to egg white aroma. Sensory panelists corroborated the chemistry: fishy notes faded over time, ammonia intensity rose to dominate by day 36, and the overall character shifted from fresh to mature and pickled.

The yolk, as the team expected, was a far richer and more complicated story. GC-IMS identified 77 volatile compounds in yolk and GC–MS found 86, including 23 aldehydes, 19 ketones, and 14 alcohols. Because yolk lipids fuel extensive oxidation, yolk samples produced stronger electronic nose signals than white throughout the process. Aldehydes such as hexanal, which reached the highest measured concentration at 308 nanograms per gram, along with nonanal, octanal, and a suite of unsaturated alkenals, delivered green, fatty, and fruity aromas. Ketones like 1-octen-3-one, with an extraordinarily low odor threshold of 0.003 nanograms per gram, added herbal and mushroom nuances, while esters from active esterification contributed fruity top notes. Sulfur- and nitrogen-containing compounds, including thiazoles, dimethyl sulfide, and various pyrazines, arose from sulfur amino acid degradation and Maillard reactions, imparting the sulfurous, roasted, meaty character that defines a ripe preserved egg yolk.

In total, 39 yolk volatiles exceeded their odor thresholds, and 23 were flagged as key aroma compounds on day 36, ten of them aldehydes. The trained panel rated yolk higher than white on ammonia, fatty, rotten egg, and salted egg attributes, consistent with its heavier load of lipid oxidation products and sulfur compounds. The researchers are careful to note the limits of their semi-quantitative approach: concentrations were estimated with a single internal standard, and odor thresholds drawn from the literature may vary with the food matrix, so the key compound lists should be viewed as strong candidates rather than definitive verdicts, pending confirmation by gas chromatography-olfactometry and aroma recombination experiments.

Perhaps the most forward-looking part of the study is its attempt to connect the volatile end products to their non-volatile precursors. Untargeted metabolomics identified 144 non-volatile compounds in egg white and 539 in yolk, dominated by lipids, amino acids, and their derivatives. Correlation network analysis revealed striking associations: in yolk, 17 non-volatile metabolites correlated strongly with 15 aroma compounds, with glycerophospholipids, particularly phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylethanolamine species, most tightly linked to aldehyde formation. The data suggest a plausible pathway in which alkali-driven phospholipid hydrolysis releases unsaturated fatty acids that oxidize into hydroperoxides and then fragment into aldehydes, ketones, and alcohols, while amino acids released from protein degradation feed Strecker degradation and Maillard reactions that generate pyrazines and Strecker aldehydes. The authors emphasize that these are correlations, not proven causation, and that isotope-labeling experiments will be needed to confirm the routes.

For a product with two thousand years of history and roughly 40 percent of China’s duck egg harvest devoted to it, preserved eggs have remained surprisingly opaque at the molecular level. This study shows that the critical window is the first 24 days, when pH shifts, protein degradation, and lipid oxidation do most of the work that determines final flavor, and that white and yolk follow fundamentally different aromatic trajectories, the white shaped by a handful of potent compounds and the yolk by a dense, layered chorus of oxidation and Maillard products. By defining which molecules matter and when they appear, the researchers have given the industry a mechanistic and analytical foundation for steering flavor deliberately, whether the goal is taming the ammonia bite, amplifying the savory depth, or ensuring that every batch of century eggs tastes exactly as tradition demands.

Subject of Research: Aroma compound formation in preserved eggs during alkaline pickling

Article Title: Spatiotemporal evolution of aroma compounds in egg white and yolk of preserved eggs during pickling

Article References: Chen, X., Yue, Z., Li, Y., Yang, W., Li, S., Ma, X., O'Sullivan, M., Zeng, H., & Wang, Y. (2026). Spatiotemporal evolution of aroma compounds in egg white and yolk of preserved eggs during pickling. Food Chemistry: X, 39, Article 104483. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fochx.2026.104483

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.fochx.2026.104483

Keywords: preserved eggs, century eggs, pidan, aroma compounds, lipid oxidation, Maillard reaction, GC-MS, GC-IMS, metabolomics, flavor chemistry, duck eggs, pickling

Flavor is the decisive currency of consumer acceptance, and in egg yolks it is largely built from precursors already present in the raw material. Yolks are rich reservoirs of lipids, proteins and bioactive compounds, and when they are heated, these components undergo a cascade of chemical transformations: unsaturated fatty acids oxidize, amino acids and reducing sugars participate in Maillard and Strecker reactions, and the resulting aldehydes, ketones, furans, pyrazines and sulfur-containing volatiles collectively define what we perceive as cooked aroma. Previous studies of egg flavor have generally relied on a single analytical lens, most commonly gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry, which identifies volatile compounds but says little about where they come from. The team behind the new study argued that a fuller account requires watching the volatiles, the lipids and the metabolites simultaneously, and then asking whether their changes move in statistically coordinated patterns.

To do this, the researchers collected fresh quail eggs within twenty-four hours of laying, boiled whole eggs from cold water under a standardized regime of six minutes of continuous boiling, and then snap-froze the separated yolks in liquid nitrogen. Each experimental group comprised six independent biological replicates, one egg per replicate, a design that gives the statistical analyses genuine power. The yolks were then subjected to four complementary analytical platforms. Gas chromatography–ion mobility spectrometry, or GC–IMS, provided rapid fingerprinting of the global volatile profile; headspace solid-phase microextraction coupled to gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, HS-SPME–GC–MS, delivered detailed identification and semi-quantification of individual volatiles; targeted lipidomics on a triple quadrupole LC–MS/MS platform quantified more than a thousand lipid species; and widely targeted metabolomics catalogued hundreds of water-soluble metabolites. Correlation analyses then tied these data layers together.

The GC–IMS results alone were striking. The system detected fifty-eight volatile organic compounds, forty-eight of which could be identified, spanning aldehydes, alcohols, ketones, esters and sulfur-containing species. Six compounds appeared exclusively in cooked yolks: a dimeric form of propanal, a dimeric form of hexanal, pentanal, 3-methylbutanal, 2-butanone and dimethyl disulfide. Multivariate modeling separated raw and cooked samples cleanly, with the first two components explaining 65.8 percent of the total variance and permutation tests confirming the model’s reliability. Broadly, the data show that boiling pushed the yolk’s volatile profile away from an alcohol- and acid-dominated state toward a more complex aroma built from aldehydes, ketones and sulfur compounds. That shift is exactly what the classical chemistry of lipid oxidation and amino acid degradation would predict: oxidative cleavage of unsaturated fatty acids generates aldehydes such as hexanal and (E)-2-pentenal, while amino-acid-derived pathways yield Strecker aldehydes like 3-methylbutanal and sulfur volatiles such as dimethyl sulfide.

Because volatile fingerprints alone cannot reveal their origins, the researchers turned to HS-SPME–GC–MS, which detected 451 volatile features. Hydrocarbons made up the largest class at 23.95 percent, followed by heterocyclic compounds, ketones, esters, alcohols, aromatics, aldehydes, terpenoids, amines and acids. Applying variable importance thresholds and significance testing narrowed the field to nineteen significantly altered volatiles, nine of which carried estimated odor activity values above one, meaning their calculated concentrations exceeded literature-reported odor thresholds. Two compounds emerged as representative markers of the cooked-versus-raw distinction. Benzeneacetaldehyde, a floral, honey-like volatile that arises predominantly from phenylalanine degradation during heating, increased markedly after cooking. Decanal, a fatty, citrus-tinged aldehyde, was more abundant in raw yolks. The authors were careful to note that these odor activity values rest on semi-quantitative concentrations and literature thresholds rather than matrix-specific calibration, so the compounds are best described as candidate aroma markers rather than definitively established key odorants.

The lipidomic layer of the study was where the story deepened. Profiling identified 1,058 lipid species across six major categories: glycerophospholipids accounted for 48.85 percent, glycerolipids 30.23 percent, sphingolipids 13.91 percent, fatty acids 5.21 percent, sterol lipids 1.60 percent and prenol lipids 0.20 percent. Triacylglycerols, phosphatidylcholines, phosphatidylethanolamines, diglycerides and monoglycerides dominated the yolk lipidome, confirming that both neutral storage lipids and membrane phospholipids constitute the bulk of the lipid inventory. Boiling significantly altered 185 lipid species, and pathway enrichment pointed to glycerolipid metabolism and membrane lipid processes. Several triacylglycerol and diglyceride species increased in cooked yolks, suggesting enhanced lipid transformation under heat, while the phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylethanolamine classes shifted in ways consistent with oxidative degradation of their unsaturated fatty acyl chains. Because these lipids are the most plausible reservoirs of the aldehydes and ketones that define cooked aroma, their coordinated alteration is the study’s central clue: aroma formation and lipid remodeling appear to proceed together.

The metabolomic analysis added a third dimension. Widely targeted metabolomics detected 872 metabolites, with amino acids and their derivatives forming the largest class at 248 species, followed by organic acids and glycerophospholipids. A total of 180 metabolites changed significantly after heating, and pathway enrichment highlighted pentose and glucuronate interconversions, fatty acid metabolism and alpha-linolenic acid metabolism. Among the altered species were UDP-glucose and D-xylulose-5-phosphate, metabolites tied to the pool of reducing sugars and carbohydrate intermediates that feed Maillard chemistry. Changes in fatty acid-related metabolites echoed the lipidomic evidence of heat-driven oxidation. The researchers emphasized that pathway enrichment annotates the differential metabolites but does not by itself demonstrate pathway-level enzymatic activity in a system where most chemistry is thermal rather than metabolic, a candid framing that distinguishes this work from looser interpretations common in the flavor-omics literature.

The most intriguing findings came when the three data layers were correlated. Decanal showed significant positive correlations with multiple glycerolipid species, particularly triacylglycerols and cholesterol ester-associated lipids, a pattern consistent with its formation through oxidation of unsaturated acyl chains such as oleic and linoleic acid stored in those glycerolipids. Benzeneacetaldehyde, by contrast, correlated negatively with those same triacylglycerol species, and instead showed negative correlations with arabitol and ribitol, two metabolites associated with pentose metabolism and reducing sugar transformation. Decanal correlated positively with arabitol and ribitol. In other words, the study resolved two distinct association patterns: one linking fatty aldehydes to glycerolipid and carbohydrate-metabolite pools, and another linking an amino-acid-derived aromatic aldehyde to a different and partly opposite metabolic constellation. The authors are explicit that these are statistical associations, not demonstrated precursor–product relationships, and that the dataset, which profiled intact lipid species rather than full fatty acyl compositions, cannot assign specific fatty acid precursors to individual volatiles.

The study’s limitations are clearly stated: a single standardized boiling condition was tested, so the findings apply to that treatment rather than to frying, steaming or longer cooks, and biochemical validation will be needed to convert correlation into causation. Even so, the significance of the work extends beyond quail eggs. By integrating volatilomics, lipidomics and metabolomics with rigorous multivariate statistics, the researchers provide a systems-level framework for understanding how heat converts a food’s stored molecular inventory into its aroma, a framework that could guide flavor-oriented processing strategies across the egg products industry and beyond. As demand grows for precisely controlled, high-quality cooked egg products, knowing which lipid species feed which aroma compounds, and which metabolite pools shift in parallel, offers manufacturers a molecular playbook. The humble six-minute boiled quail egg, it turns out, is a controlled experiment in food chemistry happening in kitchens every day, and science has now begun to read its full molecular script.

Subject of Research: Lipid remodeling and aroma formation in quail egg yolk during thermal processing

Article Title: Lipid remodeling is associated with aroma formation during thermal processing of quail egg yolk: an integrated multi-omics study

Article References: Ma, C., Yu, X., Pi, J., Zhang, H., Pu, Y., Ke, W., & Wu, Y. (2026). Lipid remodeling is associated with aroma formation during thermal processing of quail egg yolk: an integrated multi-omics study. Current Research in Food Science, Article 101559. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crfs.2026.101559

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.crfs.2026.101559

Keywords: quail egg yolk, aroma formation, lipidomics, metabolomics, thermal processing, volatile compounds, GC-IMS, HS-SPME-GC-MS, Maillard reaction, lipid oxidation, food flavor chemistry, multi-omics